The Bird stood by a drawer pulled open, reading a letter.
“Shame on you,” Richie said, “reading other people’s mail.” It was funny the way the Bird folded the letter right away and dropped it on the counter.
“They have a boy in the U. S. Navy.”
“I know it, the duck guide told us.” He saw the Bird giving him the old Indian stare. “You don’t remember it, do you? When we was in the boat. Then me and you got out and I put him away. You remember that part, don’t you?”
The Bird didn’t answer.
“Lemme ask you a harder one,” Richie said. “How come if they moved they left their furniture?”
“They left in a hurry . . .”
“Didn’t pack anything.”
“Maybe the movers do that.”
“The movers,” Richie said. “They pack the clothes too? I don’t think these people left all their clothes, but enough to make you wonder. Upstairs in their bedroom. The bed’s made—they could come home and hop right in.”
The Bird said, “Clothes, ‘ey?”
That seemed to catch his interest.
“There’s a TV in the living room we could use. Better’n the one at Donna’s.”
“You want to steal the TV,” the Bird said, “lug it through the woods all the way to the car?”
“I was thinking, save us getting a hernia, we bring the car around and pick it up.”
The Bird didn’t like that, being shown how dumb he was. He turned to the drawer, pulled out a Detroit telephone directory and laid it on the counter.
“Look up Colson.”
“Donna already tried that.”
“Her book’s old. Look in this one.”
Still giving him orders. Yes sir. Telling him last night to keep his mouth shut. Richie opened the book and took his time flipping through pages. Donna had called about a dozen different Colsons; not one of them ever heard of a Wayne Colson. She called the ironworkers’ local; they said try him at home, they didn’t have him down as working anywhere. Richie found the listing of Colsons and counted them.
“Same ones exactly Donna called. If he’s got relatives they’re someplace else.” Richie closed the book.
He watched the Bird going through mail these people had saved. Now he was looking through a note pad that had loose sheets folded and stuck in it. Something in there seemed to interest him and he took it over to the window by the sink to see the writing better.
Richie looked around. “They got the fridge turned off, nothing in it. That must’ve broke your heart.” It didn’t get a rise. Richie thought of something else.
“Bird?”
“What?”
“You gonna kill Donna?”
That got him to look up.
“Why?”
“I just wondered.”
“You worried about her?”
“I told you, not as long as she trusts me.”
“That don’t make sense.”
“You don’t know her like I do. I’m her boy.”
The Bird looked at the note pad for a moment, Richie waiting for him. The Bird looked up and said, “What does that make me, her man?”
“I don’t know,” Richie said. “I get what I want, I don’t have to look at her Elvis pictures. I don’t even have to listen to her if I don’t want to.”
Richie felt good, giving the Bird little jabs, playing with him. Then felt himself jump and said, “Jesus Christ!”
The phone was ringing.
Loud and close to them in that little kitchen on the wall behind the Bird, Richie seeing the Bird looking back at him. Richie jumped but the Bird didn’t. He didn’t move, not even his eyes under that dumb hunting cap, while the phone rang seven times before it stopped.
It seemed quieter than before.
The Bird said, “ ‘Ey, was that the phone?”
The son of a bitch, giving it back to him now because he had seen him jump. Richie thought fast and said, “Well, why in the hell didn’t you answer it? You want to talk to somebody knows them—why didn’t you pick up the goddamn phone?”
“Anybody that calls, if they don’t know they’re gone,” the Bird said, “they don’t know where they went. That’s why. But how about somebody that moves and they don’t have the phone disconnected?”
“What’ve I been trying to tell you?” Richie said. “All the furniture, for Christ sake, the clothes upstairs.”
The Bird wasn’t listening to him. “They put that sign up, we suppose to think they moved. They didn’t move, they coming back.”
“You finally figured that out? Christ, look at all the stuff right here they left.”
The Bird still wasn’t listening, he was studying that note pad again, looking at some of the loose pages that had been stuck inside.
“There some phone numbers here they wrote down, but no names or anything.”
“Then what good are they?”
“Like you look up a number and write it down. Or somebody gives you a number over the phone, it isn’t in the book, so you make a note of it.”
“Bird, they’re coming back. We know that.”
“I’m tired waiting.”
“It can’t be too long, all their stuff here.”
“And I’m tired hearing you talk,” the Bird said, not sounding mad or with any effort, the same way he had said last night to shut up. He turned to the wall phone with the note pad and began punching numbers. Each time he got an answer the Bird would listen and then push the button to disconnect, not saying a word.
After watching him do this a few times Richie had to ask him, “Who was that?”
“Plumbing and heating company.”
After each call then Richie asked him who it was and the Bird told him, That was the Amoco station. That was a Chinese restaurant. That was a number no longer in service. That was a place does hair. Now the Bird was looking at a note, holding it up to the window. “Here’s one that says ‘New,’ underlined three times and the number.”
“You aren’t doing nothing but wasting our time,” Richie said. “We’re gonna have to wait, that’s all. You don’t like it, go back to Canada. I don’t give a shit.”
The Bird was holding up his hand, listening to a phone ring, then shaking his head, about to hang up the receiver, when a woman’s voice came on even Richie could hear, ten feet away.
“Who is this?”
“Yeah, I’m looking for Wayne Colson,” the Bird said.
There was a pause.
“He isn’t here.”
Both Richie and the Bird straightened and didn’t move.
“You know where he is?”
“Who gave you my number?”
Richie could hear her voice clearly. She sounded like a mean old broad. The Bird was already stumbling, not knowing how to talk to women of any age, telling her, “I have it written down here.” Yeah, where? What did she care it was written down someplace. The Bird telling her, “See, I’m looking for Wayne Colson.” Dumb fucking Indian. Richie walked over holding out his hand. The Bird let him take the phone, no problem, relieved.
The woman was saying, “Who is this?”
“Ma’am? Excuse me,” Richie said, getting a little smile on his face. “That was a fella works here was just on I asked to call you. See, we been trying to get hold of Wayne. . . . He gave us this number before he left—”
“He gave you my number?”
“Well, actually he gave it to the boss and the boss gave it to me, only he’s not here now. He said you’d know where he was, Wayne.”
“I don’t understand this at all.”
She sounded like an older woman. Richie took a shot and said, “Ma’am, you aren’t by any chance Wayne’s mom, are you?”
“No, I’m not.” The woman hesitated. “I’m Carmen’s mother. But I don’t know where they are, outside of she said they were driving to Florida.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Wayne said something about going down there. You don’t happen to have a number where I ca
n reach him, do you?”
There was a silence on the line. Richie looked at the Bird’s serious face, waiting.
“See, I have this check I want to send him.”
“Oh, you’re from work?”
“Yes, ma’am. I guess he was in a hurry to take off.” Richie paused to see if that would get him anything. It didn’t, so he said, “The boss told me, see, if I could get this check to him. I imagine him and your daughter would like to have it, down in Florida on a vacation.”
Richie and the Bird waited, staring at each other.
“You don’t have an address, huh?”
“No, she hasn’t given it to me.”
“I was thinking, if you’ve talked to them . . .”
He waited and there was a silence. He waited a little more and said, “Hey, I got an idea. How about if you give me your address? I can mail you the check or drop it off. See, then when you find out where they’re at you can send it.” Richie paused again, giving her a little time. “I know if it was my check I’d want to have it.”
Carmen’s mom said, “Well, I guess that would be all right. I live on Gratiot Beach, if you know where that is. You have a pencil?”
16
* * *
CARMEN HAD LOCKED the bathroom door. She stood under the shower facing the spray, eyes closed, trying not to think. She had read somewhere that enlightenment through meditation only worked if you could clear your mind of pictures and things swarming around in it and concentrate on nothing. Which seemed impossible to do, things just came. So she tried concentrating on the water, feeling it, saying to herself, “Mmmmmmmm,” and thought of Jack Nicholson about to take a shower telling the black guy who worked in the hotel there wasn’t any soap and the black guy saying yes, or that was true.
It was the Jack Nicholson movie that starts out in North Africa, in the hotel in a desert village, bugs on the wall, where Nicholson switches identities with the man in the next room who dies of a heart attack. Carmen remembered the name of the movie now, it was The Passenger. Nicholson, what he’s doing in the movie, is running away from his own life. He steps into the dead man’s life and lets it take him on a trip to different places, England, Germany, Spain, where he meets the girl in Barcelona and it’s fascinating, sort of dreamlike, not knowing what’s going to happen next, Carmen thinking that if it’s fascinating to watch it would be fascinating to do it, become someone else, at least for a while. But something funny is happening in this movie. Nicholson remembers seeing the girl in London, before, yet doesn’t think it’s strange when she shows up in Barcelona. He doesn’t even mention it till much later. He knows, with his new identity, he’s in a dangerous business and there are men after him. But he doesn’t seem to care, he’s only concerned with escaping his past. So he lets his new life happen. He lets it carry him along as a passenger to the end and the end is fascinating. At least it was fascinating to watch, the way it was filmed, not like any other movie Carmen had ever seen, it was so real in a way that she could feel what was happening without actually seeing it. Even now she could feel sorry for Nicholson. Poor guy, a passenger all the way. Not knowing when to get off.
Carmen put on a terry-cloth robe and patiently wrapped ten electric curlers in her hair, head down, eyes raised, staring at herself in the mirror, thinking that if she were Jack Nicholson she would have gotten out of there somehow, run like hell or explained who she was. The whole thing a big misunderstanding. Go back to the other life and face it, work it out. Nicholson’s wife seemed okay, she did look for him. But even if she hadn’t and even if bad guys weren’t after you and you were free to go anywhere you wanted, how long could you hang out in Barcelona or drive around Spain in that convertible? . . . Or past real estate offices in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, in her Cutlass or walk through West Park Mall. It was okay, it was a very nice mall as malls go, nice people, though no one had stopped her to say she looked like a person they would like to know. Come home and look out the windows hoping a cream-colored Plymouth didn’t turn into the drive. Fix supper, wait for Wayne to walk in full of his new job and listen to him speak in a new language as he turned from ironworker to riverman, amazed to hear it. No more spud wrenches and beaters. Now it was cowtails and hula hoops, chain slings, ratchets, the jewelry they used to tie barges up for a tow—three wide and five long on the Upper Miss on account of they have to pass through locks. But did she know what the record was on the Lower Miss? No, what? Seventy-two barges, a world-record tow the Miss Kae-D hauled from Mile 304 near Baton Rouge to Hickman, Kentucky, in May of ‘81. A fleet more than a quarter of a mile long, with a load capacity of 113,400 net tons. How did he remember that? Moved by rail it would’ve taken 1,152 boxcars, a freight train 13 miles long. By truck, shit, it would’ve taken 4,300 18-wheelers in a convoy, legally spaced, that would stretch 173 miles on the interstate. He remembered it because he was a man who could look up at a high-rise he’d helped build and tell you how many tons of structural steel were inside its skin. He was reading a book on Mississippi River navigation and the Rules of the Road, showing her maps. Did she know the Mississippi started way up here by Minneapolis–St. Paul? Yeah, she knew that. It was called the Upper Miss down to Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio came in, and the Lower Miss down to New Orleans. He told her, by the way, the Miss Kae-D was a triple-screw tow, same as the Robert R. Nally that had run aground on the Backbone, up by Mile 94, that tow he was working on and wouldn’t mind going out in sometime, take a little cruise on her. Carmen asked him how come if it was a her, it was named the Robert R. Nally?
She walked out of the bathroom in her robe and curlers, glanced down the hall and stopped dead.
A man she had never seen before was standing near the doorway to the kitchen. It was his yellow sport coat that stopped her, made her look and held her rigid. She saw the yellow coat—the man in it beefy, with short legs and arms. She saw his arms raise, saw the palms of his hands extended toward her.
He said, “Take it easy, okay? I’m not gonna hurt you.” As if to reassure her, keep her from screaming or running out of the house. “I rang the bell—listen, I didn’t mean to walk in on you like this, I’m sorry.”
“I’m getting used to it,” Carmen said, more irritated than afraid, even though she was fairly certain this guy must be the previous tenant, the Mafia witness from somewhere in the East, New Jersey. He was in his upper fifties, about five-seven, with a little gigolo mustache and hair that was too dark and thick, too perfect, to be his own. Carmen was good at spotting rugs.
So this was what a loan shark looked like.
“You’re Mr. Molina, aren’t you?”
His expression changed just a little.
“Yeah, I used to live here.”
“Well, you don’t anymore. What do you want?”
It startled him; he seemed more surprised now than when she said his name.
“I stopped by—my wife thinks maybe she left one of her rings here she can’t find.”
Carmen said, “You want to search my house?”
“No, it’s okay. I won’t disturb you.”
“I’ll tell you something, I cleaned this place from top to bottom and didn’t find anything but dirt.”
She was at ease, confident, standing up to this guy. Then began to lose it—Oh, my God—as she nodded toward the spare bedroom and felt the curlers in her hair and felt Mr. Molina staring at them.
“Unless it might be in there. I didn’t touch those boxes.”
“No, that’s nothing, some junk. Old clothes I was gonna throw away or give to somebody. Listen, I’m sorry the way the place was.”
Carmen looked at him again. He did seem sorry.
“My wife was already gone and when I left . . . Well, I left, that’s all. I decided and that was it.”
“How long did you live here?”
“Almost five years.”
“That seems like a long time.”
“You kidding? It was five years too long, if you know what I’m talking about, the k
ind of situation I’m in. I think you do, since you know my name, probably where I’m from, my life history.” He came toward her taking cautious steps, as if testing the floor.
Carmen didn’t move. She could tell now, absolutely, he was wearing a rug, a good one, a style popular with a number of movie stars, but still a rug. She decided if he didn’t feel funny wearing it there was no reason to be self-conscious about her curlers. She was even beginning to feel comfortable with this man.
When he said, “It was that deputy marshal that told you, uh? That kid Britton?”
Carmen said, “We call him Ferris, so we won’t think of him as a parole officer,” and saw the man’s expression change, his eyes open with obvious surprise. Carmen put out her hand. “Mr. Molina, we’re both in the same club.”
The last time they drove up the river to Port Huron they crossed the Blue Water Bridge to Sarnia and got Richie’s chin stitched up at the hospital and Armand had waited in the blue Cadillac to think of what they would do next. When was that, last year? It seemed like it. This time they came to visit the ironworker’s mother-in-law, and Armand was still thinking of what they would do next on this trip that didn’t look like it would ever end.
They had stopped at Donna’s house while she was off driving her school bus to change from the hunting outfits to regular clothes. Now Armand had on his suit and Richie, driving the car because he was the driver now, had on his nice-to-be-nice T-shirt under a silver jacket he had taken from the guy’s closet. “Show the woman,” Richie said, “look, I’m an ironworker and a really nice guy.” The jacket was an old one, too big for him, but that was okay. The idea would be for Richie to do the talking, continue to play the company guy he was on the phone with her. He said, “You may as well wait in the car, Bird. It won’t take both of us.”
That was the punk talking.
Armand didn’t like to hear it. There were things he wanted to tell Richie, to try to keep him under control, but didn’t say anything about it driving along the river. If he told him too soon it would be in and out of the punk’s head. So he let Richie play the radio and slap the steering wheel in time to the rock music until they had driven through Port Huron and now were catching glimpses of Lake Huron, gray and overcast, between the homes spaced along the shore. Armand turned off the radio and said, “Let’s think about what the woman knows and what she doesn’t.”